NAIROBI, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to use information communication technology (ICT) to widen the tax base and boost government revenues, officials said on Thursday.
Ruth Wachira, acting commissioner domestic taxes in Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), told a media briefing in Nairobi that about 3.8 million individuals filed their income tax in 2017 against an estimated working population of 18 million.
"We hope to deploy use of ICT to detect those who are earning an income but are not paying their fair share of taxes," Wachira said.
She noted that Kenya is committed to expand the number of tax payers in the country in order to increase domestic resource mobilization and reduce dependence on loans for financing expenditure on social programs and basic infrastructure.
KRA plans to roll out the value added tax (VAT) auto assessment system (VAA) after a successful trial to curb tax evasion among the business community.
Caxton Masudi Ngeywo, deputy commissioner policy and tax advisory KRA, said that every tax system uses information to identify non compliant individuals.
Ngeywo said that KRA is currently implementing reforms that will enable the tax authority to access data from third parties for the purpose of reducing cases of income non declaration or under reporting.
The tax administrator plans to build a data warehouse to hold all bank, property, utilities and business transactions taking place in the country.
He said that the data will enable KRA to detect those who earn incomes but are not paying their fair share of taxes.
